The constantly transforming AI market is having a major impact on changing the shape of today’s fibre networks, making patterns of deployment more unpredictable as wholesalers race to meet demand across multiple regions.

Service providers with a strong existing mix of networks in tier-one, tier-two and tier-three data centre markets already have a springboard to quickly and flexibly serve the needs of hyperscalers, OTTs and content providers. Those locations outside the main hubs help give them access to the massive amounts of space and power required to support AI.

“AI and compute requirements are driving unprecedented demand for connectivity,” says Greg Ortyl, EVP and president of Uniti Wholesale. “Hyperscalers and neoclouds require power to support these massive compute needs.”

Such players also want a fast response to meet their demands, with pressure on them to move quickly to harness growth opportunities early. “Customers are looking for providers they can rely on to keep up with demand,” says Ortyl. “They’re so busy right now that partners that can really deliver are the ones on which they’re going to lean more heavily.”

Across the tiers

That is what Uniti Wholesale believes it can offer in the US, with Ortyl highlighting that the company’s presence across its country-wide infrastructure already extends into many tier-two and tier-three markets where competitors may not traditionally have had a network.

Apart from aiding with space and power needs, this helps support the demand for additional bandwidth in less connected areas, as well as those that already have significant capacity. It also improves reach to the increasingly large data centres opening in many markets.

“We have a huge competitive advantage throughout the south-east and Midwest of the country in particular,” says Ortyl. “Markets are burgeoning that even three years ago weren’t recognised by many in the industry as key data centre locations, with billions of dollars of investments going into them. In some of those places, we already have dense fibre that reaches not just to the core of the market, but also to outlying areas.”

Locations he cites that are on the rise include the likes of Memphis, Tennessee; Muskogee, Oklahoma; Amarillo, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Birmingham, Huntsville and Montgomery in Alabama; Jackson in Mississippi; and Baton Rouge, Alexandria and Shreveport in Louisiana.

Kenny Gunderman, CEO of Uniti Group, clarifies some of the benefits of already having infrastructure and operational support in such areas, making it easier to boost capacity or reach new places when the demand to do so emerges.

“We’re often building at or near existing infrastructure, making the economics more attractive for us and allowing us to expand our network in a strategic way,” he says. “With AI-driven buildouts, we’re not going off into the middle of nowhere to places that are unfamiliar to us, in the sense that we’re largely building off existing infrastructure.”

Quality connections

Aside from these less traditional markets, Uniti is seeking to improve connections between major data centre locations where demand continues to soar, such as Ashburn in Virginia, Atlanta in Georgia, Dallas and San Antonio in Texas, Chicago in Illinois, the Bay Area and Southern California.

“In those places, the ability to sell 100G and 400G waves to our customers is critical,” says Ortyl. “The current market situation is one of instant demand that customers need fulfilled as fast as possible, so we need to think strategically about where we can proactively deploy gear to shorten delivery intervals.”

In line with this, Uniti announced in mid-January that it would be undergoing a significant expansion of its dark fibre network to connect between tier-one markets with fast-growing AI hubs. This will involve the company deploying an additional 1,800km of ultra-high-capacity fibre, while upgrading space and power at more than 20 colocation sites.

The first phase of the rollout was completed in January in the southern US, comprising a 542km build from Tulsa in Oklahoma to Little Rock in Arkansas, and a 233km one from Little Rock to Memphis. The network will be further expanded over the next two years. The rollout will include the connection of Dallas to fast-growing AI data centre markets like Memphis and Little Rock, as well as Haskell and Amarillo in Texas, and Muskogee.

Uniti hopes the deployment will pave the way to meeting the low-latency demands of the future with highly scalable infrastructure, while providing much-needed diversity in routes for customers. Ortyl emphasises, meanwhile, that it is worth bearing in mind that supporting AI is not the sole advantage of boosting bandwidth, despite developments in that area taking the headlines nowadays.

“The skyrocketing of capacity requirements is not all about AI,” says Ortyl. “Good ‘old-fashioned’ cloud services are, for example, continuing to drive more bits to be transported than ever before.”

Catching the waves

To meet demand in an even more timely manner, Uniti is aiming to predict where future hotspots of activity will be to help prioritise where it can proactively light up some of its dark fibre routes. As part of this, it is harnessing the experience of its customer base and talking to telecoms, AI and neocloud companies to understand potential imminent trends.

At Metro Connect, Uniti Wholesale is also launching a new product called FastWaves that will enable it to much more speedily deploy 100G and 400G wavelengths for the most demanding, bandwidth-intensive environments – aided by the use of optronics technology, which combines optics and electronics. “FastWaves will allow us to proactively deploy optronics out in the field, meaning we can turn up waves in a matter of just a few days, as opposed to a few months,” says Ortyl.

Meanwhile, the company’s merger with Windstream Wholesale last year has solidified Uniti’s position and allowed it to make the long-term infrastructure investments demanded by AI-scale deployments.

It has also created a powerful company combining metro and regional network expertise from Uniti with long-haul infrastructure and optical transport benefits from Windstream. Underpinned by its Intelligent Converged Optical Network (ICON), Uniti appears in a strong position to move forward.

Building for the future

And the company believes that the opportunity is huge, with Gunderman highlighting that the AI surge of today is entirely different from the dotcom bubble of the 1990s that ultimately burst. “Today, we’re not building for future demand, as the demand is there already,” he says. “When we sell any amount of capacity, the hyperscalers are using it and coming back for more.”

He adds that Uniti is in a position that only a select few enjoy in the market as the impact of AI evolves. “There’s really only a handful of companies building this massive-scale infrastructure that can deliver on time,” he says. “We’re not competing against hundreds of other fibre providers like back in the late 1990s.”

Separately, Ortyl refers to the ways in which AI will help the company itself in areas such as improving customer experience by coming up with better and quicker, more intelligent resolutions to issues, as well as fewer hand-offs around the team.

The need to quickly deploy many fibres is, meanwhile, rising, with Ortyl noting that enterprise applications have typically used one or two pairs of fibre, but that AI deployments now often start at 144 fibres and can scale to 432 or 864, or even higher fibre counts.

One resource Uniti is harnessing to deal with the need for rapid change is its own long experience in the industry, taking this boldly forward into the AI world. “We’ve been building fibre for decades now and it’s something that we understand really well,” says Ortyl. “We have an experienced team that has basically seen and heard it all as well.”

Above all, he says, Uniti sees itself as a “trusted infrastructure partner” that has earned faith from customers in delivering to help take them forward as AI continues to gain traction. He believes that this will help the company come out strong going forward, as it ramps up its network for today’s dynamic market.

“Never has it been more important for a fibre provider to do what it says it’s going to do,” says Ortyl. “We’ve been doing exactly that as we’ve seen this AI boom expand, and we’re scaling for 2026 and beyond.”